From volunteering to paid employment: skills transfer in the South Australian Country Fire Service

This report is an outcome of research collaboration between the South Australian Country Fire Service (SA CFS), Government Skills Australia (GSA) and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). The project looked at the extent to which skills obtained in the voluntary sector are used and applied in the formal employment sector.

Key messages

• It is useful to have a local study to add to knowledge about volunteer recruitment, retention and training across Australia. The challenges are not uniform across the country. SA CFS brigades promote a strong sense of working together which, combined with opportunities for training and an interesting variety of work, have improved the climate for recruitment and retention in recent years.
• This research has shown that volunteers use skills gained through formal and informal vocational education and training in the public safety sector in other parts of their working life. This transfer is recognised most strongly by the volunteers/employees themselves. It also reveals that resources for training are limited and therefore focused quite rightly on operational skills, with formal recognition of more generic, albeit valuable, skills such as leadership, management and team work not possible.
• Volunteering provides career development opportunities for SA CFS volunteers, especially younger ones. The latter often choose to participate in community emergency services groups as a pathway to gaining employment, as well as to contribute to their community and build personal skills and self-esteem.
• Recognition systems that support local learning outcomes in semi-formal, peer and informal settings would bring many benefits, in terms of recruitment and retention of volunteers but also in revealing skills such as leadership and management that reside in a local community.
• There are clear linkages between public safety programs and other industry qualifications pertinent to, for example, skills needed in Agriculture; Food and Forestry; Mining; Public Administration and Safety industries. Greater effort to identify the synergies could provide a wider funding base for public safety volunteer training. Enhanced training opportunities would further strengthen retention and participation incentives, particularly in communities further away from the main population centres.

Dr Craig Fowler
Managing Director, NCVER

Volunteers are an invaluable asset to Australian society. This report shows that the skills obtained by South Australian Country Fire Service (SA CFS) volunteers also contribute to the vitality of businesses and communities.

Put simply: a common complaint from business and industry is that employees entering the workforce are not ‘job ready’. They often lack the practical skills, maturity and workplace experience to perform well in their roles, leaving employers to fill the gap by providing training either at their own expense or with public funding.

In contrast, a new employee with previous experience as a volunteer in an emergency services organisation comes into the workplace with an understanding of teamwork, a demonstrated sense of community and responsibility, and an appreciation of the role of organisational culture, thus accelerating their emergence as an asset to their employer.

This case study of the SA CFS examined key factors in the resourcing and efficacy of training for volunteers. It was undertaken as a joint initiative of Government Skills Australia (GSA), the SA CFS and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).

The SA CFS delivers nationally endorsed and non-endorsed training to their volunteers, all funded from the annual operational budget it receives from the South Australian Government. It maintains a training centre at Brukunga in the Adelaide Hills and several regional training resources across the state. The SA CFS is a registered training organisation. 

The research sought views through qualitative and quantitative sources, interviewing brigades, employers and key industry stakeholders – 242 volunteers responded to the quantitative survey.

The core hypothesis for this research was that SA CFS volunteers who trained under the Australian Qualifications Framework’s (AQF) Public Safety Training Package are taking skills and knowledge gained in roles as firefighters, trainers and incident managers into their paid employment. Formal transferrable skills revealed in the case study included safety and first aid, truck driving, equipment use (e.g. using a chainsaw), training and assessment. Such skills have valuable alignment with jobs in Agriculture; Food and Forestry; Mining; Public Administration and Safety; and Health Care and Social Assistance industry areas. Other generic skills acquired informally are in management, leadership, communication and logistics. The SA CFS training model is not funded to recognise these latter skills.

The data gathered also show that the SA CFS provides pathways for young people through its programs for cadets; the inclusion of SA CFS volunteering in the South Australian Certificate of Education for Years 11 and 12; and the provision of nationally accredited units in operational training. This is important given the need to recruit and retain new, younger volunteers in the emergency service sector.

The findings indicate that volunteers are more strongly aware of the benefits of SA CFS training to the workplace than their employers. Their skills acquisition and transfer have multifaceted, multi-directional benefits: volunteers who are drawn from a broad range of industries bring professional skills to the brigade and transfer knowledge among the volunteer cohort; they also take skills imparted during their volunteer experience back to the workplace and to their communities. Greater recognition of this process is warranted, especially in order to elucidate the overall gains for both employers and the community from the activities of the SA CFS as a learning organisation.

While volunteer recruitment and retention are major preoccupations within the Australian volunteer sector, these are not challenges for the SA CFS. Rather, it has constant difficulty in funding the operational training of new volunteers. Given evidence of mutual benefits for employers, employees, the SA CFS and local communities from volunteer training, this paper argues there is a need for greater policy consideration of how to create a wider funding base for public safety volunteer training by finding synergies with vocational training supported through the national training system.